


Nap time date

by fandomfan



Series: James Dates [6]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Happy Ending, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon, Post-Finale, Silvermadiflintham, Tumblr Prompt, and they all lived happily ever after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 01:44:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13730466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomfan/pseuds/fandomfan
Summary: What better way to spend an autumn afternoon when there's no work to do than to take a nap with your darlings?  Good question, James Flint.  Good question.





	Nap time date

**Author's Note:**

> As with other dates in this series, this belongs in the same universe (and references other dates), but can stand alone.

There is a woman’s hand smoothing through his hair as James surfaces toward consciousness. For a fraction of a second, he thinks it is Miranda caressing him as was her habit. But he wakes a bit more and realises no, that cannot be right. There comes the expected breeze of grief through him as he remembers, but after all this time, it is no more than a breeze, blowing in and blown out again by the fondness that also comes with that same memory. 

No, this is not Miranda. This crisp autumnal air is none of London’s making, and the mattress beneath him is decidedly not that of a decadently draped four-post bed. The woman’s voice above his head is deeper and accented with an entirely different part of the world. But it is in hushed conversation with warm male tones he would know at any level of awareness.

Thomas is saying, “… seems to be the balance of nobility and folly. To adventure into a folly of a war for loyalty’s sake, only to have to fight just as hard to return home again.” 

“I cannot think Homer meant there to be one over the other,” Madi answers him. “For isn’t all war a test of loyalty, no matter its cause? And aren’t all journeys full of tribulation, no matter how small or how grand their object?”

“A point well made,” Thomas concedes. “And, you will be unsurprised to learn, very like one James has made repeatedly over the years.”

“If James agrees with me about _The Iliad_  and _The Odyssey_ , then it is simple. We both must be right,” Madi says. Though he has said nothing, she pets him more firmly, as though praising his logic.

“So it seems,” Thomas says. Then comes a pause before he adds, “It makes me happier than I think you will ever know to see him cared for by more hands than mine.”

James goes suddenly warm and is grateful that Madi’s hand continues its soothing.

“And as you know very well, it is no hardship to care for him,” she says. “I am glad you welcome it so, for I am not inclined to stop.”

“Miranda is the one who discovered how much he enjoyed being petted like this,” Thomas says. His voice sounds fond rather than sorrowful, and James, caressed and content, is glad for it. “He'll never tell you himself, but trust me, he likes little better than being stroked like a house cat."

“He is a very fine, if rather cantankerous, house cat,” Madi’s voice smiles back, over James’s head.

“Oh yes,” Thomas answers. “The finest ginger tom you’ll ever find.”

She chuckles, and James is soothed and drowsy and in love. “You will think me naive and sheltered,” Madi says, and Thomas makes a reflexive noise of wordless protest while she goes on, “but I’ve never seen hair this rich, auburn colour. There was, of course, his beard, but that made me think his hair would be the same orange fire. And when we first knew each other, those years back, his head was bristles at best. I will always remember that first day John and I arrived here to you, and I did not recognise the man wielding the saw beside the barn.” Her hand cards ceaselessly on as she talks. “To be truthful, I saw him and thought _Why, that man looks as Captain Flint might have done, had he not so insisted upon looking like a death’s head ghoul_. And then he stood up and turned round, and it was James.”

Madi laughs, a small sound of pleased self-deprecation.

“To me, this was always James,” Thomas says. “In my mind, all those years apart, James was fierce conviction and rapier wit and long, cinnamon hair that I have never once stopped wanting to take in my hands.” He suits gentle action to ardent words, tracing a finger through the locks at James’s temple. James keeps his eyes closed and tries to remain still, but he fears the blush he can by now feel on his skin gives the lie to his slumberous state.

“That sounds very dashing, indeed,” Madi says. “And with those eyes, and all the freckles, and the general musculature... your James sounds rather irresistible.” She sounds playful and teasing, and James is quite certain now that she knows he’s awake. Still, he hides his smile and carries on with his charade.

“I had, I think, one quarter-hour at the very start of our acquaintance when I resisted him,” says Thomas.

“And then what happened?” Madi asks.

“The uneven smile happened,” Thomas replies, and Madi groans in sympathetic affirmation. “Until that moment, he was merely a handsome Lieutenant, and I’ll confess to a weakness for a Royal Navy uniform that turned my head at many a fine-looking sailor. But then I said something or other—likely foolish, there’s your naive and sheltered for you—and he quirked up the left side of his damnably attractive mouth, and I was lost for him. It was quite beyond my control.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Madi says, adding a gentle scritch to James’s scalp. “What is the line from Homer? ‘Smiled from the heart a fell sardonic smile’, I believe.”

“And now it is _you_  who shall make me weak,” Thomas says, and James, eyes still closed, can see the warmth of his gaze toward Madi.

“Thomas Hamilton,” she answers him fondly, “you are a fool indeed. All one needs to win your heart is an independent mind and a knowledge of one’s literature.”

“You wound me,” Thomas says, followed immediately by the short sound of a kiss. And then, “And are quite wrong, besides.”

“Oh, am I?” Madi laughs.

“Entirely. James knew little of literature when we met, and comprehensively won my heart regardless.”

Ah, but now his reputation has been besmirched, and James must end his sleeping farce.

“Pardon me that I did not spend my childhood idly reading novels and poetry all the day long,” James interjects, finally opening his eyes.

Two well-loved faces turn to look down at him. He has endured—has _done_ —terrible things in his life, but if they have led him here, to afternoon dozing with clever, beautiful people in a house filled with love, then perhaps he bested his Odysseyan trials well enough, after all.

“Why, you are awake.” It is Madi who says it, no hint of surprise in her dry tone.

“That needn’t stop you petting me,” he says.

Thomas laughs, “Tomcat. Some things do not change with time.” The memory of Miranda breezes through James again, leaving a smile tinged bittersweet. He reaches for Thomas’s sun-lined face and arches up for his kiss. Thomas hums and James purrs and Madi makes an appreciative, salacious sort of noise, her hand tightening momentarily in his hair.

“Ah, so this is where all my people have gone.” It is a new voice from the doorway, only it is not truly new, because it is John’s voice, and James secretly believes that he was born with John’s voice in his head and his heart, only it took him some forty years to find it in the flesh. “Look at all of you, lying about in the middle of the afternoon,” John continues. “My lazy lovers,” he says, and when James turns his head to look at him, his face is transparent with affection.

James, propped on one elbow with Thomas still kissing near, with Madi’s hand still in his hair, reaches toward John. “We seem to be one lover short. Come. Be lazy with us.”

John does, crossing the room to drop his crutch and burrow directly into the center of their large bed. This bed is the first piece of furniture James made for his own, and not someone else’s, family, and it is a great testament to his skill. Would that he could speak of its craftsmanship more widely, but to tell the neighbours that he can build beds to withstand four people’s frequent, enthusiastic joining… suffice it to say that James has learnt when to be privately protective of his happiness.

Right now, his happiness is contained in this bed he built, with John making a great show of squirming about and Madi laughing as he butts his head playfully against her cheek and Thomas—James's own truest Thomas—sighing at such antics with a most Hamiltonian gleam in his eye.

“John, you’re worse than a puppy,” Thomas says.

“Arf,” says John and licks the bridge of Thomas’s nose, producing a startled peal of laughter.

“First we’ve a great ginger cat to contend with, and now an overgrown pup,” Madi smiles, and scratches enthusiastically behind both of John’s ears. “I shall have no end of petting, now.”

“No, I’m afraid you shall not,” Thomas says, and while he makes his tone stern, he moves a hand to stroke through John’s curls as he adds, “For this pup is clearly one of the more active breeds—a poodle, perhaps—and requires a great deal of attention, while the cat, on the other hand”—and he brings his other hand to smoothe over the back of James’s skull—“will never come seeking it, but needs the care no less.” His voice has gone soft and sincere, and James feels tender as a bruise for being so thoroughly known.

John comes to settle against James’s shoulder, subsiding under Madi’s hands. It is a darkening autumn afternoon, and James has no work to do and all of his dear ones with him.

“I should quite like to nap like a cat,” he says. “Which is what I was doing when I was interrupted by a discussion of Homer, of all the ridiculous things.”

John laughs softly against James’s collarbone and pats his chest. “There’s no need to feign disgust. Everyone in this bed is quite clear that no one loves a discussion of Homer more than you. Though I would like to vote in favour of your napping proposition.”

“Ever my little shit, aren’t you?” James sighs, wrapping an arm around John’s shoulders to hold him near, to feel his heat, to smell his skin. Madi shifts on the bed on John’s other side to lie beside him, and Thomas does the same next to James, all four of them, curled together in this home they’ve carved out and cried for and clung to.

“Always,” John says, and again, “Always.”

“All is as it should be, then,” says James.

And they rest.

**Author's Note:**

> This series of dates has been SUPER fun to write. Thank you for all your commenting and kudos on it. Please continue to squeal about Black Sails with me at [Tumblr](http://fand0mfan.tumblr.com).
> 
> Included in this story are two little nuggets I owe to the aforementioned comments. [Twofrontteethstillcrooked](http://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked) is the one who said Thomas and Madi would talk about literature and how excellent James is while James blushed and pretended not to hear, and [slimwhistler](http://archiveofourown.org/users/slimwhistler) is the one who said Madi would be super excited about seeing James's hair for the first time.
> 
> Comments are love and fic-fodder. It's really true.


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